


the age of the anthrocene

by ennaih (aquandrian)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, F/M, Frankenstein AU, I don't know what else to say, Jynnic Fandom Challenge, Prompt Fill, This is very very dark, because well it's Frankenstein, medical gore, this is not fluffy you guys, well not until the very end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:39:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8279737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/ennaih
Summary: Jyn Erso, a scientist as clever and talented as her father, is tasked by Mon Mothma to create the perfect soldier for the Resistance.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Anthrocene_ by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Yes, it's the spelling Neil de Grasse Tyson prefers. Anthrocene or [Anthropocene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene): a proposed epoch that begins when human activities started to have a significant global impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems.

_I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine, and rage the likes of which you will not believe. If I cannot indulge the one, I will satisfy the other._

\-- _Frankenstein_ or _The Modern Prometheus_ , Mary Shelley 

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The first time, the voltage and chemical levels are completely off, and the waking body bursts into flames on the slab. The second time, the levels are right but the creature goes straight from dead to a screaming berserker, coming right for her, terrified and terrifying. Jyn Erso grabs the blaster and blows its head right off, furious at the waste of another perfectly good cadaver. 

The third time, she includes a sedative agent in the chemical mix, and retreats with her hand on the blaster. The creature goes from a lump of inanimate flesh to a soft sleeping peace. She checks its vitals, all good. It wakes and blinks trusting blue eyes up at her, its face twitching slowly into a smile that reflects her own. She smiles down at it, and drives the bolt through its right temple, killing it instantly. The brain wasn’t right anyway.

She should report her progress to Mon Mothma but instead sets to work on the fourth and final body. It’s not enough to thaw it from the carbonite. She carves it open and replaces the heart, lungs, liver and spleen all with younger organs. Injects highly illegal substances to strengthen the sinews and change the bone composition enough to eradicate all brittleness. It’s tricky work and very enjoyable, making sure the structure doesn’t damage the surrounding tissue, making sure the appearance is still human enough.

Leia comes to check on her, that she’s sleeping and eating enough. “Yes, yes.” Jyn flaps a hand at her. “Pass me that suture silk. If you’re going to hang around, make yourself useful.”

This never works. Leia just rolls her eyes, sitting on the edge of the next table, and moves her legs out of the way for the helper droid with its tray. “You work too hard. When was the last time you even slept?”

Jyn shrugs, threading the suture needle. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Well, yes! You don’t sleep, you make bad choices. Didn’t Mon Mothma teach you that?”

She has a point. Jyn sighs, resting the instrument. Her eyes skim up the naked body on the slab. “But I’m so close. It’s just a matter of days, Leia. Days.”

Leia hops off the table, clapping her hand onto Jyn’s shoulder. “Come have a drink with us. One night off won’t hurt. You can tell the guys where the clitoris is, it’ll blow their minds.”

She laughs. “No, you can do that. I’ll go sleep for a while. Thanks for dropping by.”

Leia regards her with affectionate exasperation. “You’re impossible. I’m so glad you’re on our side.”

When she’s gone and there’s just the whirring of the droids at rest and the drip of chemicals in their tubes, Jyn Erso gets back to work. She hasn’t touched the brain except to run electrical impulses through it and monitor the activity. So far so good but she knows the real proof won’t turn up in any scan.

Once the body is all sutured up, she has it placed in the bacta tank for a few days. It’s important that there is no scarring, none at all.

Well, maybe one. As she watches it float in the cool white blue fluid, shimmering reflections upon her and the lab walls, she thinks, yes, one scar. It’s the last touch before the final act. She etches it herself rather than leaving it to a droid. A precise line of slash marks down the right temple to the curve of the cheekbone, red and livid. Visible to everyone that this is a made thing, an owned thing.

Maybe she should invite Mon Mothma to witness her success as it happens. But no, she’d rather a different presentation. Later. 

For now, she tells the droids to take their positions by the switches and monitor screens. There should be a storm breaking overheard, lightning and thunder ripping night skies. There should be the natural elements going wild in protest outside her regulated clinical kingdom. Instead there’s afternoon sunshine on the high small windows, and the cool metal smell of a clean laboratory. She walks around the long basin with its shallow pool of infused bacta, taking one last look at the thing of meat she has shaped into a ready vessel.

“All right.” She places one hand on the blaster and the other poised to enter the final code. “This is it.”

The current hums and then sizzles through the liquid; electricity laces blue up and across, from the feet up, crossing back and forth, up and up the body til it reaches the head, and then she ratchets the slide on the screen. The brain wakes and flinches the body once, one sharp jolt and then it’s trembling and breathing, trembling and breathing, eyes squeezed shut. She sees the mouth gasp, and slides the current down, slow, deliberate, watching the blue recede, watching the pain subside.

Pain is important, necessary to the process. Life is pain, she remembers suddenly her father quoting to her with a grin, like it’s a joke rather than something terrible and true. Life is pain, princess. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

The words linger in her head as she approaches the trembling thing on the basin. The mouth had opened first, struggling for air. And now as she draws near, knowing better than to touch, the pale lashes flicker up. Shocky blue eyes that struggle to make sense of the ceiling above, that water and blink repeatedly, that seize upon her face and plead something inarticulate and desperate.

“It’s all right,” she says softly, activating the sedating agent. “You’re all right. I’m here. Everything’s going to be fine.” 

It has no language but it understands tone. And as she puts her hand gently upon its shoulder, it understands touch. The hands flutter, seize upon the air but it doesn’t yet know how to take hold of her. So she eases it up, the naked male body that now breathes and stares at her, trying desperately to understand this too. She takes one hand between both of hers, standing so her face is all it sees, all that fills its vision. “It’s all right. See, feel.” She rubs its hand between hers, damp from the bacta but so warm and alive compared to the dead heavy thing it was a few minutes ago. “See?” She peers into its face as it gasps and gasps, shaking all over, its eyes darting up and down her, across her face. The sedative isn’t having as much an effect as she’d hoped, probably because of the augmented tissue, but she’s not alarmed yet.

“You’re going to be all right. Here.” She takes its hand and places it against her cheek. “See? I’m just like you. I’m alive like you.” It moans then, lurching forward at this new sensation, mouth open and wet, eyes blue and wet. She puts her other hand on its face, another new shocking sensation. 

“You’re alive. You’re here. Your name is Krennic.”

__________

 

Jyn sees the moment the creature goes from being an it to being a he. She sees the moment it sees itself for the first time, when it puts a hand to the transparisteel, amazed and then frowning. “That’s you,” she says, unable to stop herself. “You. Krennic.”

The blanket slips from around its shoulders as it rubs its hand across the surface. And then it leans back, a slow deliberate movement that its reflection obeys, and understanding dawns across its face. It looks at her, a sound in its throat like it’s already trying to articulate. “Yes, that’s right,” she says. “Krennic. You.”

“You.”

He stares at her and speaks again in a disused voice. “You.”

She has the droids wash him, figuring the sooner he adapts to them the better. And sure enough, he’s fascinated by the difference between his skin and their steel surfaces. The clothes she helps him with, naming each garment as it goes on. The body she cut into and altered and sewed back up again is concealed beneath comfortable dark trousers and a buttoned top. As she dresses him, she can tell his curiosity focuses on her. It’s a slightly uncomfortable intimacy, the way he touches her hair and her throat, wondering and tentative. At one point he goes to touch her breast but she blocks it at the last second and somehow he’s learnt enough of her signals to understand that’s not right. His eyes anxious, he touches her bare wrist instead and looks to see if that’s okay. She smiles a little up at him, fastening the button on his trousers, and he tries to smile back, the muscles of his face shifting the mark on his temple. “There you go.”

He doesn’t like shoes, absolutely refuses them. It’s the first sign of conflict, a wilful personality, and she’s absurdly pleased by this. “All right. But then you’ll just have to learn the hard way.”

Language is something he has to acquire. She has a protocol droid brought in specifically for this, introduces it to Krennic as TP-9. “But you can call me Pete,” says the chirpy purple droid. “Some people call me Purple Pete. Sounds a bit dirty, really, but that’s humans for you.” It laughs nervously, waiting for Jyn to respond. She rolls her eyes and leaves them to it.

Krennic and Pete spend the days studying datapads and holovids. At first, Jyn keeps an eye on them from her worktable, listening to Krennic’s halting attempts at speech. He’s clever, she knows that, and it shows in his frustration at his own inability. The droid is infinitely patient and somehow manages to charm Krennic with its absurd attempts at humour. She watches as it and her creature actually bond over language lessons, sparking something like jealousy in her. Of course she could dismiss the droid and take over the lessons herself but she knows she hasn’t the patience or the skills, and anyway Mon Mothma has her reconfiguring battle simulations for the Resistance soldiers.

Then as the Chancellor summons her to the nearby base, Jyn leaves the two of them alone, knowing she can access the droid’s recording unit at any time. She runs the sims for the pilots and soldiers, and every now and then checks the feed. It’s inevitably the same, Krennic’s intent face glancing from the holo image to the droid, clear blue eyes flickering with thought. He listens more than he talks, and she’s barely exchanged more than a few words with him in the few weeks since his awakening.

Then one evening she returns to the lab, and he’s in her private room, sitting on her bed with an expression of painful eagerness, and some sort of object between his broad blunt hands. Jyn closes the door, wary. “What is it, Krennic?”

He swallows and gets to his feet, taller than her but uncertain and a little charming for it. His hair has been cut, she notices, brown and silver jagged short. It sets off his cheekbones and the red scar on his temple. And now he swallows again and holds out the thing to her. It’s small and wooden, a carving of some kind. She comes away from the door and takes it.

“A cameo,” he says with careful precision. “I made it for you.”

It’s her face carved up from pale wood, an astonishingly good likeness. She looks up at him, her voice level. “Thank you, Krennic.”

“Thank you,” he says formally. Neither of them have smiled. But when she moves away, he grabs her hand and says with urgency, “Thank **_you_**.” There’s such meaning in his keen face, a sort of innocent hunger. She nods, pulling her hand away, and pats him on the arm. 

“Off you go.”

He sleeps on a cot in the lab, surrounded by datapads and gadgets that he’s learning to work from the other droids. There are times when Jyn, suffering with insomnia, wanders from her room to the kitchen facility to get herself a drink. And when she walks back, she sees him curled on his side under the thin blanket, clutching a datapad in one hand and murmuring to himself in its light.

So far she’s made sure that all the information he accesses is of a general nature. Language and fiction, geographies devoid of politics, never any history. He devours all of it, and sometimes when she shares a meal with him, he recites it to her, so proud of his own progress, so proud to be able to share his new knowledge with her. She lets him talk and then corrects him without mercy. So far he hasn’t learnt to resent her for that.

___________

 

Three weeks pass and she decides it’s time for him to venture out of the lab. He still refuses to wear shoes but has stubbed his toes enough times to listen when she tells him in no uncertain terms to put the boots on. “You know if you put them on, you’ll get to go outside. Otherwise, no dice.”

“Dice.” He frowns at her.

“Dice,” Pete interrupts, ever helpful. “No dice means --”

“I’ll tell him what it means, thank you.” 

The droid bows its head and scuttles back. And Jyn catches a narrow expression on Krennic’s face, like he’s finally noticed her curt manner with the droids. It’s not quite the etiquette he’s learnt from Pete. “Come on,” Jyn reminds him. “Boots.”

The lab is set a little away from the main base, a row of trees to one side, shielding them from the training fields, such as they are. Krennic’s first sight of blue sky and green trees makes his eyes go wide, his hand groping for her arm. She lets him grasp it, puts her hand over his as they move away from the building and he looks up and up at the great clear sky, at the soft white clouds coming in from the west.

“It’s so big,” he stammers. “I never thought -- I saw the holovids -- Pete showed me. But I never thought -- oh.” He closes his eyes at the breeze that touches his face and stirs his short hair, his slightly crooked mouth turning up. “Oh,” he says softly, and she remembers how cruelly handsome he was in his former life. Realises he has a sort of pure beauty now.

She guides him away from the main base, away from the people in the distance. He notices, of course, but he follows her, meek and then distracted by the trees and the earth and all the new sounds and smells. “This is bark,” he tells her excitedly, his hand on the tree trunk.

“Yes, that’s right.”

He names and describes everything he sees for her, eager in his discovery, showing off and always always coming back to her side. Between the trees, he finds tiny yellow flowers and brings her a few, his smile a wide boyish curve. She accepts them, sending him to find a different kind. This is where she can instruct him, outside of the lab, shape his way into the world.

His new way.

When the daylight seeps away, they return. She asks him, “How do you feel about meeting some new people tomorrow?”

He blinks a lot, anxious as he watches his footing. “I don’t know. I’m afraid. But if you want me to, I will.”

She touches him on the arm. “That’s good. Good. Then we will. Why don’t you wear your blue shirt? You look nice in that.”

“Yes.” He beams at her. “I look very nice in that shirt.”

She bites back a laugh, shaking her head at the unassailable nature of male vanity.

But that night there’s a tap on her bedroom door. Jyn turns over and fumbles at the lamp. “What, what is it?”

He cracks the door open. “Please, may I come in?”

“What is it, Krennic?” she says a little sharply.

Hidden by the shadow of the door, his voice is small. “I’m afraid. About tomorrow.”

She sighs, thinking for a few moments, and then pushes up in bed. “All right. Come in.”

He slips in, barefoot in his soft grey pajama pants, freckled shoulders bared by the grey singlet. “Come here,” she says, patting the bed. He’s seen her before in her night shirt, glanced at the shape and colour of her nipples visible through the thin blue material. So now she pulls the covers up under her arms and watches him sit on the bed, his shoulders hunched, the vulnerable mouth parted.

“What’s worrying you about tomorrow?”

He takes in an agitated breath, his gaze skittering to her and away. “I have no name --”

“What? Yes, you do --”

“No,” he shakes his head, his hand moving, “that’s not what I mean. Pete said I should introduce myself to people with my first name and I don’t know what it is.” He gives her that pleading look, all big blue eyes. “What’s my first name?”

His history writes itself between them. The immaculate white jacket and the ridiculous billowing cape across the green fields, the little black hat, the dark trousers and polished boots. His cold cold eyes. She looks at him and remembers all the blood and the screams and the destruction. The loss.

“You must choose one yourself,” she tells him. “I gave you your last name. You give yourself this.”

His eyes widen, artless and then thoughtful, gathering joy and excitement. “Really?” he asks. “Anything I want?”

“Anything you want.” This is the charm of giving him free will, seeing what he chooses to do with it, what it tells her about him. So far he’s been all innocence and wonder, all goodness. It makes her wonder about the inherent goodness of humanity, whether her cynicism has been all learned, whether it’s been earned.

He grins to himself, elbows on his knees as he thinks and thinks, so lively and animated. And she on pure instinct reaches out her hand to touch his hair. When he doesn’t flinch away, she tunnels her fingers through the short thick strands of silver brown. “I’ve got it,” he says, turning his head. His mouth is against the skin of her palm. She feels him breathe in sharply, sees him look at her past her hand, something bright and sharp in his beautiful eyes.

“Come here,” she says, light-headed and reckless. He obeys. He comes to lie with her like it’s something he’s wanted, that almost painful willingness to trust, like it’s never occurred to him to fear her. She arranges the covers over them, squashed together in her single bed. He has made a small breathy sound and pressed his mouth against the skin of her throat.

“Shhh,” she murmurs, reaching around him to turn the lamp off. The room plunges into a hot darkness, the heat of his excited breath on her, his heart thumping against her, all the hard lines of his body against her slenderness. She runs her fingertips through his hair again, liking this delicious control of him, the knowledge that she’s violating one more boundary as if she hasn’t already travelled far beyond the strictures of moral science and society.

“Jyn Erso,” he whispers. It’s the first time he’s said her name, and there’s such reverence in his voice, in the way he tips his face up a little to look at her in the dark.

“That’s right,” she murmurs, touching his face and finding the soft uneven shape of his lips. He gasps at that, tries to mouth her fingers like some needy animal. “Give me your hand,” she says softly, and when he does, she slides it into the open neckline of her night shirt. Slides it so his palm covers the swell of her naked breast, so her nipple is trapped in the hollow of his hand. He makes that shocky little gasp again, pushes his hips instinctively against her thigh. It makes her feel positively lewd and glad about it, glad to be violating him in this way, even though he doesn’t know that’s what she does.

She eases up the hem of her night shirt and makes him touch her between her thighs, delighted by the shocked sound he makes at the wetness of her cunt. His cock is hard now against her thigh, hot through the thin material. She lets him rut against her, helpless and moaning, with his fingers exploring her secret flesh. Thinks of Leia with a grin when he finds her clit and she encourages him. When he realises he can give her pleasure like that, his eagerness makes him rise up on an elbow. The covers slide down in the dark, he presses his mouth against her throat, not knowing how to kiss yet. He only knows how to taste her skin and work his fingers around her clit, work his fingers into her yielding cunt. She slides her hand up the strong sinewy contour of his arm, remembers that she made this body what it is, that she owns him like no one has ever owned another human being. 

But she doesn’t kiss him. Urges him on, shapes her hand to his cock through fabric because she owns that part of him too. He shakes when she does that, overwhelmed with sensation and inarticulate once more, all catchy little moans. She slides her hand into his pajamas, pushing the singlet up over his hard flat abdomen, and takes hold of his long hard cock already wet at the tip. He cries out, his face hot against her throat, half trapping her under his body. But she has him. She spreads her legs so he can fuck his fingers up into her, and twists her hand down and up his hot flesh. Merciless, she pulls his pleasure from him, another new experience that wrecks him, hot tears on her skin. And when his come spills hot and wet across her palm, she pushes him down on the bed and straddles him, makes him lick it off her hand. He does it like everything else, with eagerness, fearless because it’s her, his creator.

She lets him stay the night with her, even if he keeps waking her up with excited roaming hands, discovering her body over and over again. She doesn’t fuck herself on him, telling herself it’s not necessary. For now, she teaches him how to make her come with his fingers. At her back, he pants happily, his hand between her thighs, her nipples bare in the dark air, and she comes with his cock hard up against her spine, trapped between him and the wall.

At some point after she comes for maybe the third or fourth time, she drags her fingers through his hair and says sleepily: “What is it then? What did you choose?”

He makes a happy little sound against her mouth, still unaware. “Rory. My first name is Rory.”

She hates it and resolves to keep calling him Krennic before she drifts off to sleep.

___________

 

The next day Pete helps him dress, and she inspects him before they leave. “Good.” She hesitates a moment, wanting to give him some final instruction. But the purple droid twitches behind him and she remembers he’s learnt everything he possibly could for this meeting. Her presentation of him to the Rebellion command.

“All right. Come on.” 

She’s not nervous. Maybe it’s arrogance, certainly people have called her that. But she knows when she’s done a good job, the knowledge is sure and calm inside her. So she strides across the base to the main building, and he follows her, two steps behind, silent and watchful. As they approach the knots of people moving between craft and hangar, the droids zipping past, so much conversation and activity, she realises how this must affect him and reaches her hand out to him. He takes it without looking, his grip tight, almost painful.

She had wondered if he’d be recognised. But on their way inside, the crew and soldiers tend to nod acknowledgment at her and cast curious looks at him. Maybe it’s the lack of uniform. Maybe now all he seems is one more human come to join the Rebellion, a slightly nervous handsome man in civilian clothing with short silver hair. She links her fingers with his and says low, “It’s all right. You’re with me. Don’t worry.”

Mon Mothma looks up from the green star map, ever serene, and her sharp eyes fix on the Imperial officer formerly known as Orson Krennic. Beside him, Jyn says, “Chancellor, may I introduce my friend Rory Krennic? He comes to us, hoping to help.”

There were gasps around them when she said his name. Krennic draws himself up tall, shoulders squared, and steps forward, his hand out. His eyes are very blue because of the shirt he wears. “How do you do? I’m very happy to meet you.”

Mothma takes a moment but she does clasp his hand over the map, her eyes going from his to the scarred temple. “We’re glad to have you, Mr Krennic.” She casts a quelling glance over the people around and then smiles at both of them. “Why don’t we talk in private?”

But she stops Jyn at the door of the interview room, tells Krennic to take a seat, that they’ll be right with him. He doesn’t like that, his eyes narrowing. Jyn makes a small subtle gesture, reassuring him. And the door closes between them.

“How much does he know?” Mothma asks without preamble.

“Nothing specific. It’s only been three weeks.”

Mothma closes her eyes for a moment, brow pinched. “That’s not good.” She turns that green gaze on Jyn, implacable. “You have to keep him away from everyone.”

“I can’t keep him locked up forever. What good will he be then to us?”

The Chancellor raises her hand, her white sleeve falling back. “He has to know what he is, why he’s here. Have you thought about that? What do you intend to tell him?”

“I don’t know,” Jyn lies. “But all right. I’ll keep him with me until he’s ready. Until we can use him. I just wanted you to see him.”

Mon Mothma’s face softens a little at that. She smiles at Jyn, the cool whiteness warming to something like appreciation. “You’ve done very well. He’s almost exactly as he was.”

“He’s better. You’ll see.”

When they join Krennic in the interview room, he watches Mothma carefully as she welcomes him to the Rebellion effort. Jyn can tell he doesn’t like her, that he’s suspicious and looking for something, anything. 

“What did she say to you outside?” he asks as they walk back to the lab.

“She asked me where you came from.” She glances up into his face, curious. “Do you know?”

“Yes. You made me,” he says simply, like it’s nothing at all. “Pete told me I was dead but then you brought me back and you improved me in the lab. Is that wrong?” He searches her face anxiously.

“No. No, that’s right. But what did you learn from the holovids? Not everybody is brought back from the dead. In fact,” she touches his arm, sees the way his head bends and his eyes go hot on her, “you’re the first ever, you know. You’re very special.”

“To you? Am I special to you?” He’s staring at her, so hungry.

Jyn breathes in, dropping her hand as casually as she can. “To the Rebellion.”

That bewilders him, so much so he can find nothing to say in return.

___________

 

Mon Mothma comes with a few generals to watch the Rebellion’s new weapon at practice. In simulations designed specifically to his abilities, clad in sleek grey leggings and singlet, Krennic demonstrates his strength and reflexes. When presented with an array of weapons, he chooses a blaster and an utterly ludicrous sword Jyn had only included as a joke. Instead, she watches with faint shock as he tests the weight and balance of the hilt, and then watches with barely concealed pride as he wields the sword with gleeful efficiency against the poor droids. He loves that sword, so much so he tosses aside the blaster, and manages to deflect fire with the blade, his reflexes fast enough to avoid burns and bolts.

“It must be the Force,” one of the generals mutters.

“It’s science,” she snarls. 

When they leave, she takes the sword, already calculating how to equip it with enough tech against an Imperial arsenal. Krennic watches her with bright eyes, breathless as he mops the sweat from his bare chest with the discarded singlet. “I did well, right? Were they impressed?”

“Oh, very,” she says absently, looking down the length of the blade. “Tell me what you want.” She holds it upright between them. “How can I make this a better weapon for you?”

He’s a scarily fast learner, already deduced from the sims what he needs and what he can do. As she listens to him, she knows that eventually she’s going to have to deal with his history and what he knows of it before he finds out on his own. But for now, they work together on the sword. He’s learnt so much tech from the droids, enough to present her with some interesting little challenges. They work out how to augment the blade so it withstands laser blasts. The tricky bit is to maintain its balance. He very much wants it to have an electrified mode, which makes her laugh and say, “You’ll shock yourself, you fool.”

“Rubbish! All I need is enough insulation on the hilt. I swear I can do it! Here, Pete, give me that.”

He grabs the canister of grease from the droid and pours a healthy measure across the blade, slathers it entirely across, and then points the blackened sword at Jyn. “Watch,” he says, determination glittering in his perfectly shaped eyes. “Not a single bit on me, right? Watch.”

He does a sort of sword ballet thing across the lab, all grace and lethal beauty. She puts her chin on her hand as she watches, wondering if this was a skill he had in that former life, or something he had picked up from the vids, or something improvised with the weapon in hand. His movements seem formal, a brutal elegance, but she knows nothing of such Old Republic practices. 

He whirls and comes to a stop before her, the sword a fierce upright line before his face. “There.” He holds it out to the side, presents himself for her inspection. “Tell me if you see a single speck of grease anywhere on me.”

She points to his calf. “Right there.”

Krennic glances down and makes a face. “Well, look, it splattered. That wouldn’t happen with a current. I swear! Please! Let me try it, I can do it myself,” he pleads, so much laughing joy.

“No,” she says severely. “Give it to me. I’ll do it. You don’t touch my tech, you know that.”

“Yes, Jyn Erso,” he says, abashed and head bent as he relinquishes the filthy sword to her. But then she glances across and there’s a glint of irrepressible mirth in the downcast blue eyes. She shakes her head, unnerved.

More nights than not, he sleeps with her, wrapping himself around her in the narrow bed. She puts up with the suffocating closeness because he learns just as quick in bed as everywhere else. They haven’t kissed, haven’t fucked yet but they’re approaching it fast. He learns her body, all the ways she likes to be touched, how to stroke his fingertips down the inside of her arms over and over again until she’s quivering and sensitised, moaning for him. How to use his teeth on her nipples just enough to make her cry out, cunt wet and aching. How to eat her out, greedy and pushing her further, further as he tugs at his own cock against the sheets. She lets him lick her all over, loving the way he devours this knowledge of her skin, loving the way he breathes her in and drowns himself in the scent of her. 

They do all this in the lamplight, bodies tangling, in a gasping breathless silence, his eyes too expressive and too full of emotion she doesn’t want to see. But he’s too beautiful to hide in the dark, too much hers to touch and take. She lets him come on her belly, on her breasts, lets him lick it from there because he’s so happy to do so. He never questions anything she wants, and she thinks about fucking him, all the ways to penetrate and have his body. Maybe she will before she’s done with him, before she hands him over to the Rebellion to use as they see fit. In all this, she uses him for the pleasure, anticipating the moment of exquisite pain.

___________

 

“Will you tell me something?” he asks her one afternoon as they lie on his cot out in the lab. They had been working on a simulation until he had gotten his hands on her and she’d realised he was hard in the tight grey leggings. She’d ended face down on the cot, moaning and coming with his face up between the curves of her bottom, his fingers hooking across the sweet spot in her dripping cunt.

Now she licks the taste of herself off his lips and caresses the soft mass of his cock and balls trapped between their thighs. “What?”

“Who was I before you made me?”

Jyn goes still, something that makes him alert and anxious. She pushes herself up, leaning against the cool dura wall. Usually the sight of her naked breasts is enough to distract him. Not this time. He props himself on his elbows, his mouth worried and vulnerable, waiting for her answer.

“How much do you know?” she asks, vaguely aware of the droids moving around the lab.

“Nothing,” he replies, truthful. “Pete won’t tell me but I know he knows.”

That intrigues her. “What makes you say that?”

There’s the slyness she remembers from the old images and holovids. It gleams in the blue grey, shows in the tiny pursing of his thin mouth. “Whenever I ask, he gets all twitchy and changes the subject. Sometimes when I ask him about certain planets, about our enemies, he does it then too. Why?” The slyness melts away. “What does any of that have to do with me?”

She reaches out her hand, light-headed and reckless once more as she strokes his sleek face. “You think about it. You have access to so much more information now. Why don’t you work it out and then come and tell me what you find?”

It’s a wicked hot fire she plays with, and it’s exhilarating. Knowing that sword could slice down on her any moment. And yes, she had originally envisioned telling him herself so she could witness that moment of perfect realisation, of perfect annihilation. But now over the next few days, she prowls around him and watches as he researches and learns of the history of the galaxy, of the Empire.

Pete is sent back to the base, it’s just him and her and the helper droids. The sword is almost fully functional. There’s talk of a secret mission, of infiltrating the Director of the Imperial Army’s flagship in search of intel about some weapons test. She thinks of her missing probably dead father and his too alive science, so different to and as lethal as the science she’s conquered.

Then Mon Mothma summons her and tells her they may have located Galen Erso. She stares, her mind racing through the possibilities. “Fine,” she says, “I’ll take Krennic and go. It’ll be a good opportunity to test him in the field.” 

The Chancellor frowns. “And what if you can’t control him? What if something goes wrong?”

“Then I destroy him.”

There’s a moment of shocked silence, some murmur and shift between the generals. “Is that possible?” Mothma asks. “Is he capable of being killed?”

“Oh yes,” Jyn Erso says coolly. “We won’t have to do anything. He’ll kill himself. I know exactly how to make that happen.”

When Jedha explodes, she and Krennic are piloting through the dust clouds, his eyes brilliant and smile wild as he scans the displays and glances across at her at the controls. In a moment, he’s going to dart out of the copilot seat and take the gunner’s swivel bucket. She laughs back, blood hot, and wrenches them out of the way of a hurling rock the size of a building.

When they find Galen Erso on Scarif, her father stares in abject horror at Krennic who strides out of the shallow tropical waters, grinning through the blood of troopers as he wipes the sword blade. He is a beautiful terrible figure against the cloudless blue sky, his strong body clad in sleek black with touches of blue, his silver hair ruffled by the hot breeze.

Jyn puts a warning hand on her father’s arm, saying to Krennic, “See, I told you the electrified thing was a bad idea.”

“Rubbish. No one got electrocuted unless I wanted them to.” He sheathes the sword in the long scabbard and smiles warm, holding out his hand. “I’m Krennic, how’re you going?”

“Jyn,” her father stammers, clutching at her. 

“It’s all right,” she says quickly, catching Krennic’s frown. “Come on, let’s get out of here. That scary fuck in the black suit is probably heading right for us.”

In fact, the scary fuck turns up just as Krennic has sliced the head of the Director of the Imperial Army from her body. “Come on, come on, come on,” Jyn screams from the TIE striker and Krennic runs, takes a flying leap that no ordinary human could manage, and drops lightly to the ground when she brings it in to land a few horrific hours later.

“Are you all right?” she asks as soon as she gets out and gets to him, running her hands over his torso. There’s condensation melting off him, a few cold burns. The scary fuck in the black suit had chased them in his own striker, opening fire that made her heart leap into her mouth.

“Yep,” Krennic says cheerfully, clearly still thrumming with adrenaline. “That sword is the best thing you’ve ever made. After me, of course.” He grins down at her, relatively unharmed and so unnatural, so outrageous she wants to kiss him right there.

“You … deflected laser fire … with the sword?” her father asks with halting disbelief. Krennic grins at him, his arm around Jyn, one hand coming to the small of her back. “Fuck yeah, don’t you know the amazing things your daughter can do with weapons?”

He did not learn that language from Pete. One mission away from base to a few planets and he’s picked up a confidence and casualness of speech that she finds terribly attractive even as it annoys her. Sometimes it seems like he doesn’t belong to her anymore.

But then he takes her hand as they turn towards the great castle with its fluttering flags in the sunshine, and she knows he is still hers.

____________

 

After the transmissions and the celebratory drinks, they’re shown to separate rooms, Jyn and Krennic in one, her father in another. She wants to wash up and then go talk with Galen, but Krennic has that glitter in his eye, a certain urgency in the way he reaches for her as she strips her clothes off. “No,” she says but lets him touch her anyway. He buries his face in her neck, his arms tight around her as they sit in the wide tin bath, his heart pounding hard against her shoulderblade. All she needs now is for her father to walk in, unannounced.

But he doesn’t, and Krennic slides his wet hands under her breasts, cupping them and stroking his thumbs across her nipples. A moan in her throat, she turns her face towards his, and his mouth slips against her cheek, warm and lovely. She still hasn’t taught him how to kiss, he still hasn’t found that certain type of holovid. 

“I did well today, didn’t I?” He licks at the corner of her mouth.

“So well,” she says breathlessly, glancing across the room to where the data tapes are stowed in her pack. “You’ve changed everything.”

“We’ve changed everything,” he corrects, nuzzling her jaw. She can feel his cock hard against her back, the water slipping around them. She could just lift herself, lift and take him like this, feel him shake and cry out under her, fucked apart all over again. But then she thinks of her father in the next room, thinks of that green field and cold cold eyes. And she holds his hand to her bare breast, makes him squeeze her nipple. 

“Make me come.”

He obeys happily, his teeth in her neck and the fingers of one hand cruel on her nipple, the other buried between her shaking thighs. She gasps and cries out, shameless sounds that bounce against the sunlit walls. Her father may hear her but she’s not sure she cares right now, fucking herself on Krennic’s fingers, water sloshing out of the tub, and Krennic’s cock sliding against the hot skin of her back. 

“I want this forever,” he says against her wet skin, the words slipping from him. “Let’s have this forever, just you and me. My creator.”

She reaches back to clutch at his hair, wanting him to shut the hell up, wanting to come. And his mouth slips against hers, so intimate, so warm that he gasps and comes on her back, shaking like she knew he would. Jyn lets out a groan, so frustrated, but then he remembers himself and his duty to her, twists his fingers up inside her so he catches her sweet spot and watches her face as she trembles and comes, all gasping mouth and fluttering lashes.

She leaves him in the tub, closes the room door on the sight of him with his head back, naked and asleep in the sunshine glimmering off the water.

“What did you do?” Galen asks bleakly when she sits down. “My god, Jyn, what did you make?”

She takes his hand between hers. “I made it right --”

“How?” he retorts. “How is any of this right? That man -- you know what he did, what he set in motion. You know what he cost us.”

“Yes, and he will pay. Listen to me,” she says earnestly. “Right now he doesn’t know anything of what he was or what he did. But when he does --”

Her father stares at her and then ever so subtly recoils. “No …”

She lets his hand slip away from hers, trying to hide her disappointment as she looks across the room. “Well.” 

“You must stop this,” her father urges. “For your own good, Jyn. You must -- I don’t know -- let him go. Let this end. It will only diminish you. Let him … go out into the galaxy on his own --”

“No.” She looks at him, direct and uncompromising. “No, he cannot be let loose on the galaxy. He is too strong, too much of a weapon. I created him for the Rebellion, for our cause. I won’t risk him falling prey to other people, Imperial agendas.” 

Her father subsides. “Yes. I suppose you’re right.”

“I know I am.” She pauses, then says with some difficulty: “You must try to be nicer to him. He notices how people react to him. And because he cares about me, he wants you to like him.”

Galen turns his sad eyes on her, nodding slowly. “He doesn’t … seem like the man he was before. Maybe --”

“I don’t know about that. He is what I tell him he is. But I don’t know.” She stares, troubled, at the wall that separates the two rooms, wondering if they’ve been heard. 

Her father touches her hand. “I will try. You’ve done an amazing thing, Jyn. I am, for what it’s worth, very proud of you. I hope you know that.”

She smiles at him and kisses his cheek. “Thank you, Daddy. I’m so glad you’re back.”

His arms going around her, Galen says heavily: “We can be a family again.”

Jyn Erso looks at the sunlit wall and thinks of the creature asleep in the water. Her weapon.

____________

 

They deliver the data tapes to the Resistance. Leia takes off on a mission that Jyn decides is none of her business. She has her father to look after now. Mon Mothma offers him residence on the base but he tells Jyn privately that he’d rather stay with her or on his own, away from the others. She agrees to think about it.

“He loves you,” her father says a few days later. They’ve just finished dinner, the droids clearing up while Krennic’s wandered away to a workstation, having found a new archive of holovids to explore. Startled, Jyn looks up from her datapad to find her father has the small wooden cameo in his hand. He traces the shape of her profile, a certain grief in his familiar face. “So much like her,” he murmurs.

But then he raises his eyes and sees her sitting across the table from him. And she knows with the subtle shock that ripples through him that she’s not as much like her mother as he thought. 

“Does he?” she says with some flippancy, aware of Krennic several feet away, peering at a screen. 

“You must know that,” her father insists, sending a troubled look to their side. Over the past few days, he’s formed a cautious sort of acquaintance with Krennic. She has seen them walking among the trees together, talking. Working together in the lab, talking principles of energy. 

When Krennic comes to her bed each night, he tells her everything, bright and happy with this new relationship. The red pattern on his temple is livid still, unrepaired and unrepentant. She smiles and lets him kiss her mouth, keeping all her thoughts to herself. 

“It will hurt him.”

She grins, cold and feral. “That’s the idea, Daddy.”

Maybe that’s what decides Galen. The next day, he tells her that Mon Mothma has found him somewhere to live on a Mid Rim planet. “All right,” she replies, far less hurt than she ought to be. “I’ll take you there.”

The house is sufficient for his needs, equipped with a workshop, and close enough to a town populated with several fairly peaceable species, some even human. She checks the communications, buys him a few weapons he flatly refuses to touch, and tells him she’ll be back in a few months, that she’ll contact him every week or so. Galen wants to talk about Krennic again, the conflict shows in the worried way he regards her. But she kisses his cheek and says a brisk goodbye.

The moment she enters the lab building, she knows something has gone wrong. Everything is where it was but the droids are silent and motionless, lined up against the wall. If she didn’t know better, she’d say they were scared. Her hand unsecuring the blaster from her thigh, she moves into the wide clean workspace of slabs and monitor displays.

“Orson Krennic.”

His voice is different, clipped and cold. Exactly how it was all those years ago when she was a tiny scared girl hiding under green. Her heart triple thumps in her chest as she sees him. He leans against the long shallow basin that’s been in storage all this while, his silver head bent, a tall strong figure in sleek black with touches of blue at his wrists and throat.

“That’s right,” Jyn says, slowly putting down the blaster, her skin hot. 

He lifts his head a little, the cold blue gaze finding her from under his brows. So much simmering fury, the air seems to shiver between them with so much violence. “Why? Was it a thing of poetics?” He looks at her directly now, unsmiling and terrifying in his stillness. “Take an Imperial officer and make him into a weapon for the Rebellion?”

She smiles, brilliant with pride that he’s worked it out. “Something like that.”

He breathes in, shaking a little. The trauma etches into his face. “All of that, all of that -- I did -- all of that was me.”

“Yes.”

He pushes away from the table, distressed. “But it wasn’t. It’s not -- I’m not that person anymore. You -- ” he takes a few lurching steps forward, reaching for her hands. “You made me different, you’ve made me better. Am I not better?” he pleads, beautiful and broken.

She tilts her head as she looks up into his face, curious, dispassionate. “You were a great man, a military genius. Brilliant, talented. And you,” she says softly, “had barely begun. The things you would have done, the use you would have made of my father’s technology. You would have been Director of the Imperial Army --”

He flinches, his face going pale, trying to tug his hands from hers. She holds on, continues soft and ruthless. “-- you would have ruled the Empire, decimated the galaxy.”

His face shakes. “But I didn’t. I was stopped -- you --” 

“My mother killed you. She put the bolt through your brain.” Jyn touches her fingertips to his marked temple. He watches her, breathing shallow and rapid, his grip tight on her wrist, mouth quivering with anguish.

“Because of you, she never made it back to us. You and your ambition, your deceit took everything from us, from me.” Jyn smiles, slow and lethal. “So I took you instead.” She traces down the scar, down to the curve of his cheekbone where she cups the side of his face and tells him: “And you will pay. For every moment you destroyed, every moment you took from me. You belong entirely to me. I made you and you will remain with me always.” She steps that fraction closer, leaning into all his agitated space. “I will **_never_** let you forget.”

He gasps, a shattered sound, his fingers clutching at hers. “No, but you -- you --”

“But I love you? You’ve learnt about that, have you?” She knows how cold and beautiful she looks in that moment, sees it in the way his pleading eyes search her face. “I am your creator. Love has nothing to do with you.”

He stumbles back, finally too much, too upset to remain near her. Shaking from head to toe, turned from her, his shoulders bowed and so much pain radiating off him. She can see the struggle against knowledge, the rejection over and over again of what he knows is true, what he saw in her face and her form. 

And he starts to tear at himself, the broad blunt hands with their hard bones and hard nails. Sobbing and undone, no thought of pride or dignity, he turns to self-hatred and tries to hurt himself, tearing the fabric from his chest, tearing the sleeves from his arms. When he digs into flesh, her heart quickens. This is what she wants to see. This is her perfect moment, the reward of exquisite satisfaction. She advances on him, wants to see the moment of blood played out, his self-broken body laid out at her feet.

And his hand snaps around her throat, suddenly all she sees is livid blue eyes and the snarl of a male animal enraged. “All of this,” he hisses, squeezing her throat, lifting so her toes leave the ground. “You did all of this, used me, used me every single moment since I -- you dragged me back for all of this.” She struggles for breath, scrabbling at his hand like steel. “You,” he snarls and she finds herself flung face down on the basin, her trousers torn in cold air from her. 

He holds her down with one inexorable hand on her head, suffocating against the steel, and rams his cock so hard into her she screams, exquisite pain and perfect pleasure. He fucks her without mercy, with pure untrammelled rage, all the strength and violence of him hammering into her flesh. She feels his hand in her hair, pulling her head back, his breath hot, all his weight on her back, and his teeth sink into the flesh of her throat, like he would tear it from her. She knows he could, knows there could be blood on his mouth, her tissue and sinew on his tongue. It’s glorious violent anarchy, her greatest creation turning on her, raping her apart. She screams, coming on his too brutal too invasive cock, and he shoves her face down against the steel, snarling and fucking, not stopping not stopping until she loses consciousness.

When she surfaces, several minutes or an hour later, the lab is empty. He has taken nothing but the sword, simply walked out of the building and off the base. She inspects the damage he’s done to her, figures she’ll heal soon enough, packs a bag and tells Mothma she’s taking a ship and may not be back. She commandeers their oldest most decrepit craft, intending to sell or trade it at the soonest opportunity, and the chase begins.

___________

 

Her creature flees across the galaxy, and Jyn Erso follows. It doesn’t matter why, she need not explain herself to anyone. All she knows is he moves ever further away from her and she follows, relentless. Her body heals, she knows that maybe her mind was broken from long ago. That doesn’t matter either.

He moves through the planet systems in some unfathomable pattern only he knows, mostly alone, sometimes picking up some alien companion as violent and unsavoury as possible. He thieves and fights, leaves blood and broken bodies in more bars and slum cities than not. She gets close enough to watch him drink with a gang of human naval cadets, watches them pick up some hapless alien girl and take her to a nearby alley. When the screams and weapon fire break out, she stays hidden and listens. And eventually he is the only one to walk out of that alley, the girl’s limp body in his arms. She follows him to the nearest medical centre where the girl is left at the entrance and he disappears into the city night like some absurd hero she knows he isn’t.

A month of this steady pursuit, and then one night she’s lying in a dingy bed, listening to the sounds of the bar fight below, and the room door opens. He holds her down, hand over her mouth, and fucks her raw in the changing neon colours, his eyes cold burning blue, his silver hair flopping onto his forehead. Her body responds hard to him, wet and moaning, vicious pleasure blazing through her mind, and he pulls out, pulls back and comes on her face, shocking her. The room door closes behind him, and she’s left wiping his spunk off, tasting it like some awful new discovery.

He abandons the city planets, heading out for the green and the aquatic. She barters her passage after him, sometimes doing mechanic work, sometimes crewing. If people try to befriend her, human or alien, they learn very quickly that she isn’t interested. She makes no attempt to contact Galen or the Rebellion, her focus single and unwavering. 

In the glimmer of an aquatic night, he comes to her, savage and furious. She kisses him back, all teeth and violence, and lets him turn her over, take her from behind like that first time. Only this time he doesn’t hurt her, this time she reaches back to clutch his hair and he covers her breasts with his hands, something broken and anguished in his breath as they move together, fast and slick and good. When they finish, he stays for a few moments, his face buried in her hair, covering her body entirely with the long damp length of his. She wants to say his name, to keep him with her, but something stops her, an absurd vulnerability, too new to vocalise. A sob from his throat, and he pulls away from her, yanking his trousers up, and leaves.

She tells herself she doesn’t need to understand but it does bother her, this connection that feels unexplained even though it should be all possession and vengeance. Love was never an option, love was what her parents had, intelligent and tender and sacrificial, never bloody and violent as this. But she watches him from afar, how he talks to other creatures more bizarre and inarticulate than him, how he finds a common understanding. She watches him laugh in the sunshine of a spice market, his hair swooping silver across his forehead, feathery long on his nape, and sees him give food to a little beggar girl. His kindness exists alongside his brutality, in the shadowed smile he gives some old holy man telling him about redemption, in the way he drives the sword through the skull of some pierced and studded monstrosity attempting to rob him.

He changes himself not subtly but steadily. His clothes become more textured, rougher and more natural, but still shades of black with the touch of blue at his neck and wrist, and always the long black scabbard by his side. Now the red mark on his temple extends, the slashes somehow made more complicated. She doesn’t get close enough to see detail but it curls now across his cheekbone and down the contour to the corner of his mouth, red livid scarring never allowed to heal enough that it fades. 

When he comes to her at night, it’s too dark for her to see so she kisses where she feels the curls and ridges, runs the tip of her tongue along the pattern while he trembles in her arms and makes love to her. She knows now that’s what it is, that it has always been that way for him even when he had no name for it.

One night in the green shadows of a rainforest planet, she says: “How long? How long must we keep running?”

He laughs, a brutal silver sound, his body hot and hard beside her. “As long as it takes.”

She doesn’t know what that means, whether he’s chasing redemption or waiting for her to find forgiveness. Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither at all.

As they circle back to the more civilised planets, she hears rumours of Imperial activity, of renewed incursions and military strikes. There had been some major damage to the Empire just after the handover of the data tapes, but she had been too focused on hunting him to bother with details. Now she watches as he meets with Rebellion soldiers in markets and cantinas.

“You mustn’t,” she tells him as he leaves her bed one night. “Please don’t do this.”

He’s standing in the glimmer of a desert moon, all ivory and shadow and glittering blue eyes. “Wasn’t this my purpose? No,” he corrects himself, malicious once more. “My purpose was to destroy myself because you, my creator, wouldn’t love me.”

“Or what would you rather?” he adds softly, the red edge by his mouth. “Shall I go over to where I originally was? Give them the weapon you designed?”

She closes her eyes against his words and the sight of him leaving. “Please.”

But he is his own creature, proven that so many times since. And maybe she shouldn’t care about the fate of the galaxy or that she has been infected with some sort of idealism after all. She only knows that she doesn’t want to see him fight and maybe fall, damaged in ways she can’t repair, to see him go where she can’t follow.

____________

 

She loses him on an ice planet, in the screaming swirling whiteness of a blizzard. She’s been tracking him for two days now as he journeys towards some hidden rebel base. But the snow and wind overwhelm her, and she knows enough to take shelter, to try and wait it out, hidden in a rocky overhang as the snow piles up around her, locking what little warmth in. She could die, the possibility seems more and more likely, and she knows he moves further and further away from her, focused on a different horizon.

Her rations run out, her comms go silent. Jyn Erso lies in her bulky snow clothes and watches the last few hours of her life trickle past. She does all the cliched things of thinking about her father tinkering away in his workshop, about her ruined childhood and its few happy times, whether her mother is waiting for her somewhere. Thinks of the small carved cameo in her pack, how she’s carried it through the galaxy, a secret she barely admits to herself. She thinks about how her colleagues in the Rebellion will react -- of Leia’s angry tears, of Mon Mothma and how the sleek noble head will bow when she hears of the last sighting and no more. 

Sleep closes in, blissful and warm.

“You complete idiot! Wake up, wake up, damn you! Wake up right now!”

His voice, utterly irate, drags her out of the silence and the warmth, and then she realises he’s dragging her out of the overhang, cursing her all the way. She struggles to open her eyes, feebly pushing against him, her throat so very dry, all her words gone. When she does manage to focus, it’s to a sudden swamping of his body in rough warm clothes as he hauls her up and into his arms, getting to his feet. He’s swearing an awful lot now, using words that make her want to chuckle at the thought of a droid’s scandalised reaction.

But it isn’t snowing any more, and she has her face tucked against the living warmth of his throat, a tiny sliver of skin between the layers of clothing. She drifts back to sleep, amused at the tirade that hasn’t ended.

The next time she wakes, it’s to the glow of a fire, finding herself drenched in sweat. 

“Hold on,” he says as she flails against too much synthetic fabric. “Wait, just --”

She emerges, incensed, with her hair probably standing on end, sitting upright in a pile of discarded clothing. Krennic regards her with a sort of bemused expression. “All right now?”

“Where are we?” she demands, realises she’s naked, clutches for something and decides to leave it.

“I don’t know,” he says with some acidity. “Somewhere in the wild on this icebound planet. Instead of inside some nice warm bunker because you decided --”

“Isn’t this a bunker?” she interrupts, looking around at the dark walls leaping with shadows.

“No, this is what’s known as a cave. You’ll notice the lovely rocky features around us, the lack of windows and adequate ventilation --”

“I’m hungry.”

“You’re a menace,” he retorts but tosses her some sort of wrapped bar from a very bulky pack beside him. Jyn chooses to ignore his insolence, too enthralled by the prospect of food and grateful for the light and warmth. She’s almost to the end of the ration bar when she realises the light means she can see him clearly, see the curling marks on his face. 

But he notices her curiosity and immediately turns away, reaching into his pack for something. “We’ll stay here until you’re able to travel, and then I’ll take you to the base. They should be able to arrange passage home for you.”

Jyn focuses on the last few fragments of food. “Where will you go?”

“I’ll stay here. They can use me.”

She shivers violently, caught in a sudden chill. Krennic curses, scrambling over to her. “Back in, get back into the sleeping bag.”

“I’m too cold,” she stammers. “How, how can I be cold?” The fire is right there.

“You’re in shock. You know that. Here.” He lies down beside her, so warm and solid against the many layers of insulated material she bundles around her.

“Don’t leave me,” she says, absurd and afraid, trying to clutch at him.

Krennic turns onto his side to face her, putting his arm around her. “You’re going to be fine. I’m here. You’ll be all right.”

Much later, she drifts awake to the soft red embers of the banked fire, and finds he’s created a cocoon of blankets and insulated warmth for them. Naked, she presses against him in his rough black clothes, peering at the achingly beautiful shapes of his sleeping face. The scar is elaborate, tiny hatch marks in between the slashes she had originally carved into his skin, and then long curls of raised red along the contour of his cheekbone right down to his mouth. She frowns, sure she can almost read the pattern but it’s not right, something’s off like they’re not quite linked letters.

“Stop it,” he mutters, eyes shut. Jyn hunches back down, startled, and then burrows closer, unashamed and excited to be this close to him again in the warmth. But just as she goes to touch her lips to his, she thinks of something and stops.

“We’re going to die out here, aren’t we?”

Krennic slits open his eyes, very irritated grey blue. “We are not going to die.”

“We have no food,” she insists.

“We have plenty of food. I have food because I’m not a reckless idiot who didn’t pack enough rations.”

“I packed enough rations,” she replies, indignant. “Not all of us are artificially augmented superhumans who can go three days without eating.”

The corner of his mouth twitches, and she watches as that absurdly boyish smile spreads across his face. “Oh right, that.”

“That,” she says, mollified, and kisses him. He takes a little while to respond, letting her squirm closer, her hands undoing the fastenings to his clothes, her mouth open and eager. Then he gets hold of her bare shoulder and pushes her back. “What are you doing?”

“What am I --” Jyn rolls her eyes. “We nearly died. All right, I nearly died.”

“And now everything’s different, is it?”

“Well?” She falters a little. “Isn’t it? Don’t you … want me?”

“I always want you,” he says with sudden ferocity. “But that doesn’t -- stop, don’t do that. That doesn’t make all the ugliness between us disappear.” He looks at her face in the deep red glow of the cave, and groans and kisses her. It’s brief and hard and lovely. Until he pulls back and says: “You raped me. For all those weeks, all that time, you abused me and you took advantage of me, lied to me ever since you brought me back.”

Unnerved, Jyn snaps back: “And what you did --”

“Yes, I know what I did and I’m sorry for it,” he exclaims, angry despite himself. "I hate myself for what I did. Every damned day. Even though, even because -- I realise what I did."

She knows what she has to say now, how a platitude will make it all better and clearly that’s what he craves from her. It shows, the yearning of his expression, the way he looks at her like she’s his beloved creator all over again, the only god in his world.

“I’m not sorry,” she says, seeing the rage leap in his eyes. “I’m sorry for how it began, for hurting you. I’m sorry for all the half lies and the ugliness.” She touches his face, tracing the intricate scar, as his eyes search hers, anxious all over again. “But I can’t change the past. I can’t change how you hurt my life and I can’t change what I did to you." She takes a breath, looks at his intense blue eyes and soft uneven mouth. "But I’m not sorry for making you. I’m not sorry that you belong entirely to me, to nobody else in the galaxy but me.”

He watches for a few silent moments, his fingers looping around her wrist. And then, touching her lower lip, he says, “You know that means you belong to me too. Thee and me, creator and creature.” He presses his forehead to hers, a blur of blue and breath. “You made me and I claim you. We are not meant to ever be apart. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” she says, and takes his mouth with hers, fierce and uncompromising because he was ever hers. They make love in the hot reddish space, with nails and teeth and stinging hair, gasping with the perfect pain. She urges him in between her bare thighs, her fingers wrapped sure around the heft of his cock, and kisses his mouth as he moves into her, deeper and deeper, unstoppable. And when he’s fucking her, braced on his arms, all his strength leashed to that perfect edge of pleasure, she holds his face in her hands, the ridges of his scar against her palm, and tells him the impossible thing.

Later, when he’s wrapped around her, denying that he ever cried in response, that it was merely a reflection of firelight, she finds she can’t stop tracing the pattern of his face. “Why did you do this?”

He dislodges her, sitting up in their nest of blankets to reach for his pack. She runs a light proprietal hand up the contour of his back, seeing all the marks and healed wounds, all the evidence of a life lived away from the lab and her bacta tanks. This is what he’s made of himself. 

“Here.” He lies back down, having given her a small disc of transparisteel he clearly uses when shaving. “Like this,” he says, moving her wrist so the mirror reflects his red raised scar. “What do you see?”

She stares, slowly amazed.

He smiles up at her. “What does it say?”

She puts the mirror down, puts her hands on his face and kisses him deep.

Kisses him with a vicious proud promise of forever.

It says Jyn Erso.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was: _Bride or Groom of Frankenstein AU. One of them - either Jyn or Krennic - decides to create the perfect mate for someone else (Vader? K-2SO? Mon Mothma?) from spare parts, but they end up falling for their creation themselves. Bonus points for body worship and kinky times on a laboratory table._
> 
> Ahahaha. Yes, well. Have I mentioned how much I love the novel of Frankenstein? No wonder I leapt at this like a mad grabby thing and then followed it down the darkest paths it led, argh. 
> 
> Yes, Galen totally quoted The Princess Bride. 
> 
> Everything I know about medicine, I learnt from M*A*S*H. Everything I know about science, I learnt from The X Files. So yeah.
> 
> The name Rory is totally because of the incomparable Rory Kinnear who plays the Creature in Penny Dreadful. I really hope I have written Jyn’s Frankenstein a million billion times more interesting and better than that misogynist messianic manboy shit Victor in the show whom I loathe with the passion of a million suns. The line of "thee and me" is quoted from the show where it is [also a quote](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/128546-all-the-world-is-queer-save-thee-and-me-and) and oh my god I never knew of what until just now. I think.
> 
> Totally paraphrased the opening line of The Dark Tower series because it’s so perfect.
> 
> The last scene owes quite a lot to the Outlander books. And there's a line in there that's pretty reminiscent of _Ava Adore_ by The Smashing Pumpkins.
> 
> The idea of Krennic in carbonite is totally from onstraysod’s exquisite story, [Our Variable Star](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8134178), which everybody should read.
> 
> Now with [commissioned artwork by the incomparable winterofherdiscontent](http://ennaih.tumblr.com/post/154829112660/she-etches-it-herself-rather-than-leaving-it-to-a).


End file.
